Difference between revisions of "Timers"

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Revision as of 17:47, 2 January 2012

Original text by Aether.
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Timers

Session Change Timer

What Is It & Why You Should Be Aware Of It

Not knowing about session change timer may put you in a position where you are unable to jump gate or dock to station while being in the middle of a very hostile situation. This will subsequently lead to loss of your ship and pod.

Session change timer was introduced by CCP as a way of making sure that your client and server are in sync as to what's happening with your character. A session change is change of location of character, such as when it switches into a new ship or goes through a gate into a new system. It is not always a geographical change. The timer icon by itself is very small and might not be obvious at first. Once you enable it make sure you can locate it on your screen by jumping through a gate or switching into a new ship if you are docked.

Key thing to remember is that a new session cannot start before old timer expires.

Events that trigger session change timer are:

  • docking and undocking from a station
  • jumping through a gate
  • boarding or leaving a ship in station
  • ejecting from a ship in space
  • losing your ship in combat (i.e. you get ejected from a ship as it turns into a wreck)
  • joining a fleet
  • changing roles in fleet or getting assigned new roles
  • getting podded
  • jump cloning
  • cynoing into a system

Examples of session change timer messages:

  • "Just a moment while I finish gathering my senses. I'm pretty sure I can do it within 16 seconds."
  • "You're halfway onboard already. Please wait. Estimated time left for getting the other half aboard is 28 seconds."
  • "Can't do that while undocking. You should be squeezed out in 20 seconds."
  • "Please wait while ship is entering hangar. Scotty, the docking manager estimates 23 seconds left."

Being unaware of the session change timer often gets players killed. Here are some examples of how it can happen:

  • You have warped to a gate on which a hostile camp has been spotted. While in warp, you have accepted an fleet invite from a friend. This will start a session change timer preventing you from jumping (entering new session) once you land on the gate, much to the delight of the hostiles camping it.
  • You have jumped into a system and see a big hostile fleet sitting right on the gate you came through. You immediately attempt to fly right back to the gate and jump out, but the gate denies you jumping out. Meanwhile because you have broken your gate cloak the gate campers will get busy with shooting your ship to bits and pieces. Remember that after jumping gates you are given a session change timer. Patiently wait these 30 seconds out under the gate cloak and only then then race back towards the gate. Good luck!
  • You have been engaged on a station and subsequently lost your ship. You keep spamming dock button to dock to safety only to find that station denies you docking. Those few seconds were enough for an enemy interceptor to lock your pod and kill it. The station denied you docking because you leaving your ship upon its destruction triggered a session change timer. You cannot start a new session (dock inside a station) before your current timer expires. This is why if you have lost a ship on a gate or a station do not attempt to jump out or dock but instead immediately try to warp your pod to a celestial object.

Enabling the Session Change Timer

To enable the session change timer, log into your character and hit ESC to get into the settings menu. Go to the "General Settings" tab and in the "Generic" section find the option called "Show Session-Change Timer". Check that option and you are done. Hit "Close Window" and you will return back to the game. See the next section of this article to actually find the timer in the EVE client.

In the general settings window check the option to show session change timer on your screen.


Locating Session Change Timer On Your Screen

If you do any action which results in a session change and have the session timer option enabled, this will show you a small spinning circle at the upper left corner of your client. When you hover over the spinning circle with your mouse, it will bring up a small box that will tell you how many seconds are left on your timer.
Hover over the spinning circle with mouse to see how many seconds are left on your session timer.


Session Change Timer, Gate Cloak & Undock Invulnerability

Jumping gates or undocking you are given a certain period of invulnerability.

After jumping through a gate this is known as the "gate cloak" and will last for 1 minute. During this cloaking effect other parties on gate will not be able to see you, target you, or decloak you. While you are cloaked you may observe the situation around the gate and decide how to best proceed next. Note that gate cloak lasts twice as long as the session change timer, so you can easily wait out your timer without your cloak expiring.

When you undock from a station, you are also granted a period of undocking invulnerability of 30 seconds. However, it is not manifested in a way of a cloak. You will see your ship drifting into space away from station, but any pilots camping undock point will not be able to establish a lock on you unless you break your own invulnerability. Undocking invulnerability gets broken if you:

  • Activate any modules on you ship (hardeners, damage control, sensor booster, etc).
  • Initiate warp anywhere.
  • Double click anywhere in space to move in that direction.

However good news is that slowing your ship down by clicking on velocity dial or pressing CTRL+SPACE combination (shortcut for stopping your ship) does nothing to your undock invulnerability. When you undock, your ship will be ejected into space at maximum velocity. However, if you plan to redock back to safety you don't want to be carried out of station's docking perimeter. You should press CTRL+SPACE to stop your ship or click on its speed dial to set speed to 0 m/s. If you haven't broken your invulnerability otherwise, you can simply order your ship to redock after your session change timer expires (that's the timer you get after undocking in the first place).

Manipulating your way around session change timer will thus allow you to undock from a station, see who is camping it outside, report this to your fleet or corp/alliance, and then safely dock back up. However if you panic and start initiating warp or activating your hardeners or trying to move away from station, your invulnerability will drop and enemy pilots will be able to lock you. The station meanwhile will deny you docking because your 30 second session change timer that you got by undocking has not expired. Then the station campers can kill you.

Stations and Docking Perimeter

Every station in game has a certain amount of space around its visible model called the docking perimeter. When your ship is inside this docking perimeter you can immediately dock to the station. When it is outside of docking perimeter it will first spend some time flying into it before docking. When you undock from most stations in EVE, you will see yourself reading to be within 0m of the station on the overview for quite some time while your ship will be moving. This is because your ship is simply traveling across station's docking perimeter.

Different stations have different amount of undocking perimeter. Under certain circumstances, knowing how much of a docking perimeter different stations have can save you your ship or alternatively get your a killmail.

  • When you are undocking from a station and using your session change timer invulnerability to assess the situation outside, it is important to be able to re-dock back up immediately without hassles once this invulnerability expires. If the station has very little amount of docking perimeter, it will only take a few seconds after undocking for your ship to end up outside of docking perimeter range and be unable to re-dock immediately. If there are hostiles sitting and camping you at the undock point, they can then webify and scramble you to prevent you from getting back to station's docking perimeter.
  • When you are trying to bump ships belonging to other people away from docking perimeter of a station it is useful to know whether that might be a fruitful or a futile task.
  • When you are jumping a capital ship to a station, you ultimately want it to end up within this station's docking perimeter. This way you only have to wait out the 30 second session change timer and then simply to dock up. If your capital ship cynos in outside of docking perimeter, it will have to spend time crawling towards the station, leaving a window of opportunity for somebody to attack it while it will be unable to dock.

Majority of stations in EVE have very generous amount of docking perimeter. This amount never changes and can be easily predicted by looking at station's visible model. One of the more notable models that you will frequently see in space is the Jita 4-4 station model. The story goes that once upon a time when Jita 4-4 station became a major trading hub, CCP got tired of people smartbombing others at the undock point. Thus they gave this station an enormous amount of docking perimter making it one of the safest models undock from or cyno capital ships to.

Examples of station models with generous amount of docking perimeter.

Alternatively there are a few stations in this game called eject stations (sometimes called 'kickout' stations) where upon undocking you will find yourself to be outside docking perimeter within just a few seconds. My ship is a white square in the picture below. You can see that upon undocking I ended up being approximately 1,800 meters outside of docking perimeter. Any station with a characteristic undocking tunnel as the one on picture below will be an eject station. These types of stations are very common to encounter in Minmatar space. This particular one belongs to Concord and is located in Pakshi system.

Typical "eject" station with elongated undocking tunnel.

Two other "eject" station models are pictured below. Model on the left side is Duvolle station in Alentene system. This model is most frequently encountered in Gallente empire and 0.0 space. Model on the right hand side is a Caldari station. This one belongs to Caldari Navy and is located in Tintoh system.

More examples of "eject" station models.


Aggression timer

Aggression timer lasts 1 minute and makes you unable to jump gate or dock to station after you have performed aggressive actions. It is not same as the yellow Aggression Counter or the red Global Criminal Counter (GCC), both of which are easily observed on your screen in empire space. Aggression time is invisible both in empire and 0.0 space. Unlike the Session Change Timer you cannot enable it in any way to count down on your screen.

Action such as shooting at somebody, scrambling, webifying, dampening, or target painting them, using any other type of electronic warfare on target such as ecm burst, aggressing target with drones, trigger this timer. Doing aggressive actions to other character's cans and wrecks will also trigger this timer (but not with your own cans and wrecks). Targeting or scanning somebody's cargo or fittings, picking up items from a can or wreck that does not belong to you or salvaging another pilot's wreck will not trigger this timer. If you are being shot at but do nothing in retaliation this timer will not be triggered.

Warning: If you have your drones out and somebody starts aggressing you, your drones may auto-aggress. This will give you the 1 minute aggression timer, making you unable to dock or jump gate. Shooting a corp member will also give you timer hence why it is important to not play around and shoot each other during a pvp operation. It may end up costing you your ship when FC says "jump" and you'll be stuck on the gate with the aggression time because you decided to test a fleetmate's tank.

This timer does not get triggered by fighting and killing NPCs.

Log-Off Timers

There are two timers that get applied to ships logging off in space. One is the normal 30 second log-off timer. If you have not engaged anyone in a system or haven't been engaged and you log off in space, your ship will warp a distance of 1 million kilometers then sit there at a safespot for 30 seconds and then disappear. Your ship will continue showing on 360 directional scanner during this time. If you have activated tanking modules on it such as damage control and hardeners prior to logging, they will continue running on your ship after you logged as long as it has the capacitor to run them. If your ship was cloaked, its cloak will drop while it is waiting out this log-off timer. This period of time is quite short that it highly unlikely (but not impossible) that anyone will be able to scan probe your ship down.

However a different 15 minute log-off timer gets applied if any aggressive actions have transpired between you and another pilot. You will get this timer in any event when you shot, scrambled, neuted, or jammed somebody, applied any sort of electronic warfare modules or drones to another pilot's ship. Most importantly you also get this timer if you have been aggressed by other pilots but have done nothing in retaliation. This timer will prevent your ship from disappearing in space for 15 minutes since the last aggressive act of the engagement (not since the start of engagement). This is plenty of time for a covert ops pilot to scan down your ship with scan probes and warp its gang to its safespot.

It is important to remember, however, that this log-off timer is specific to systems. So if you for example engage a Harbinger on gate in one system then jump into the next system, the timer from previous system no longer applies. You can warp to a safespot and safely log off. However it does not mean that the old timer has disappeared. If you have jumped into the next system, hanged around there for a few minutes then went back to the system where you have engaged the Harbinger, the log-off 15 minute time that you got from it will continue to apply to your ship. If you decide to log off in this system where engagement happened, you ship will not disappear in 30 seconds but will be hanging there for several minutes.

Just like the 1 minute aggression timer, this timer is also invisible and it does not get triggered by fighting NPCs.

Some examples of how not being aware of the log-off timer can get your ship into trouble:

  • You have engaged a Drake on the gate and successfully killed it with your gang. In the next 5 minutes you get a call from a friend and decide to log out of the game. Upon logging, your ship will warp off 1 mil km and sit in space for 10 minutes before it can disappear. Meanwhile Drake's gang came into system seeking revenge and their covops pilot picks your ship up on scan. Needless to say what is going to happen next to your poor ship and possibly pod as well.
  • You are pvping with your gang and just lost your very first Zealot in a silly way. Frustrated with the game you warp your pod to a safespot and log off immediately. Logging back in you find yourself in clone vat bay having to purchase new clone and new set of implants. This happened because when you logged off your pod kept hanging mid-space for duration of your log-off timer and the enemy gang has bothered to stick around, scan probe it out, and kill it.

Empire Timers

Yellow Aggression Timer

This is a yellow 15 minute counter that is visible only in empire space and is not visible in 0.0. This yellow aggression counter simply means that you are flagged to somebody to shoot at you without Concord intervention. Most often you will observe this timer appearing after shooting some NPCs. You will also get this counter when you steal items from a yellow can or wreck. In this case you become flagged to the entire corporation of the owner of that can or wreck (exception are NPC corps). They will see you as red on their overview (but they will not see this timer) and you will see this yellow aggression counter on the upper left side of your screen.

Drag your mouse over this counter to see who you are flagged to. It will state: "Your crimes" and then list the parties that can engage you in empire space without sentry or Concord intervention. If it says something like Serpentis, Guristas, Sanshas, Blood Raiders, or Angels all it means is that you are flagged to NPCs and can disregard it. If it lists players or corporations, this you should pay attention to because as long as this timer is ticking, the player or corp listed can freely open fire on you in empire space. So once again, don't worry if you got the yellow counter due to NPCs shooting at you, but do take note if you got a counter against players.

This counter is not triggerd by salvaging somebody's wreck because salvage material does not belong to anyone. This counter will also have no effect on your docking permissions or your permissions to jump gate unlike the 1 minute Aggresson Timer. If you get engaged by the party you are flagged to, this counter will reset on the server but it unfortunately will not reset on your screen. It resets every time an aggressive action transpires between you and the party that you were flagged to and counts down from the time of the last aggressive action.

You will also get this yellow timer ticking if you engage in illegal aggression in vicinity of sentry guns (i.e. you engaged somebody on gate or station in lowsec who is not otherwise flagged to you). In this case you will get flagged to the NPC corporation to which the sentry guns around station or gate belong. This timer will reset every time the sentries "see" you on grid, but the reset once again will not show on your screen. The GCC timer that you get in such acts of piracy will overlay this yellow timer such that you will not see it. This is why it is important to not warp to stations or gates while you have GCC going as it will only reset your yellow timer against the sentry guns and thus prolong it.

Yellow Aggression Timer


Global Criminal Countdown (GCC)

This is a red counter that will appear on upper left hand side corner each time you commit a "crime". A crime is considered to be initiation of aggression in on anyone who is not an outlaw or is otherwise flagged to you. In low security space this can be triggered by acts of piracy, in high security space - by acts of suicide killing another ship.

While you have this counter in lowsec space, sentry guns will open fire on you. If you jump into high security space by accident with this red timer ticking, Concord will proceed to kill your ship. If you have gotten this timer in high security space, do not undock with a new ship while you have it going otherwise you will be promptly be killed by sentries and Concord at the undock.

By default overview settings, characters with GCC going will have a distinct red skull placed next to their name in local chat. This way you can see from local chat window who has been engaging in criminal acts in the system.

Global Criminal Countdown ( aka the "Concord aggro timer")
Example of player with GCC visible from local chat window.